happy birthday: flying north turns five

On January 31, 2011, flying north was cleared for takeoff and went live.

Since then, the blog has been read by over one hundred thousand people in 188 countries in every corner of the world, and the numbers increase with each passing month. It has traveled to all seven continents and the video content has steadily increased to include what I call “vlogcumentaries” of more than ten minutes, such as “Flying North in Antarctica.”

In terms of its reach, through the magic of Google Analytics, I am able to see where it is most popular, as follows:

Top ten U.S. states [in order]: New York, California, Virginia, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Washington.

This information raises a few interesting questions. Who is reading it in Greenland? In Tajikistan or Paraguay? In Papua New Guinea or the Seychelles? And why is no one reading it in Mauritania, the Central African Republic, or Somalia? [I suspect the latter is due to the Global Digital Divide.]

As for the year ahead, I thought I would consult www.horoscope.com to see what was in store for the Aquarian-signed blog in 2016:

You’re a rising star in 2016, when all hard work is acknowledged and rewarded.

This year you will recognize potential that others may overlook. The Moon-Saturn opposition in your 2016 chart guarantees careful thinking and planning that won’t let you down. A Mercury-Pluto conjunction will give you the nerve to be bold, but only when it’s wise.

An appetite for knowledge and adventure may come out of nowhere, and you will find practical ways to satisfy these yearnings. Your 2016 strong Mars in Scorpio won’t let you sit still for long.

The initial idea for the blog, led to by the urging of a few who were shaming me for not chronicling my travels online, has evolved over the years to something that allows me to create the content based on whatever strikes me as interesting about the world rather than being driven by a corporate or demographic-targeted agenda that the myriad of other sites have in common.

I want to thank all the blog’s readers worldwide for their continued support of this endeavor. I expect that, as the horoscope reads, the strong Mars in Scorpio wont let the blog sit still for long.